


to love is to be mortal

by bakedpotatocat



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Selves, Angst, Gen, Mental Illness, Mentions of Death, POV First Person, POV Second Person, POV Third Person Omniscient, The Burden of Ascension, Trans Female Character, Unreliable Dialogue, Unreliable Narrator, weird meta-narrative fiction, young adults scared of who they could become
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:42:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21709177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakedpotatocat/pseuds/bakedpotatocat
Summary: Two young gods struggle with being both mortal and divine, and perhaps something more.
Relationships: Vriska Serket & Dirk Strider, Vriska Serket & Equius Zahhak
Comments: 11
Kudos: 11





	to love is to be mortal

When I was a boy, I was fond of the story of the pirate god.

I am not that boy anymore, but I still strive a little to be like her, I think. Strong, courageous, carefree, disdainful of rule of law or conventional morality or anything that would hold her back, hold her down. She was a goal to be attained, a freedom to be won. Flaws and all. Complicated and yet the ideal was smooth, featureless, something to project onto.

I wonder, now that I too am a pirate god, if there is a little boy out there that looks up to me.

I wonder if he should.

“What was the point of it all, do you think?”

Dirk pauses. He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept in weeks. I have intruded into his workshop, the puppeteer god’s place of solace, where there is only him and his robots and his tinkering and silence. A flash of a memory takes me back to the last time I was in a lonely mechanic’s home, bleeding and missing an arm.

I couldn’t have saved Equius, even if I had wanted to at the time.

The one man in my life who looked at my vulnerability and need and merely grunted, took it in stride, and exasperatedly set to work on a replacement arm.

There was good in him. He rebuilt me, rebuilt Aradia, even if he was creepy and controlling and stuck in old ways.

And I let him die, let his hatred for himself, who he had been shaped to be and could never fulfill, build and swallow him up into the unrighteous rage of the clown.

The last time I let a mechanic wallow, it got several people who I could have come to call friends killed.

I won’t make that mistake again.

“We lived, didn’t we?”

“We survived.”

“And here we are, on the paradise planet. This is what it was for, wasn’t it? A new chance at life. Being better than the old.”

“Dirk, do you really believe that? Don’t lie to me. I do that enough to myself.”

“Was it worth it, Vriska? Can we really weigh our terribly mortal sins against the godly status of having saved reality itself?”

I think for a minute. How many times did I answer that question, did I say it had to be done, I was justified the entire way along?

How many times did I think a righteous death saving all of existence, defeating the big bad, would redeem me?

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

Dirk sighs. He runs a dark hand through his bleach-blonde hair. The weight of each of your words hangs like gallows over the room, thick and heavy enough to weigh your damned souls down even more than they are already.

“Why are you really here?”

“I want redemption. I thought maybe you could offer it.”

“I can’t. None of us can. Not even forgiveness can save us from that most hated critic, our own self.”

“You’re sick, aren’t you?”

A pause. The questioned thinks over the answer in their mind. How much can they trust the interrogator, someone so alike and so different? Haunted by similar demons, hating themselves, expressing grand gestures of self-destruction and suicidality alike. Joking about it or repressing it in turn. At the end of the day, they may be loved, but they are not understood. Not by their fellow actors or lovers upon the grand stage, not by their audience, and to an extent, not even by themselves.

“How did you know?”

“I am too.”

Three simple words.

Understanding.

A crack in the impeccable armor closing off the self from the world opens, a chink long-awaited, the perfect to slip a dagger into.

Or perhaps, the perfect opening to let someone in for once in their damn life.

“We are both becoming more than these thoroughly mortal bodies would have us.”

“Even so, we were sick before, weren’t we?”

Parallels. Stained glass refractions on the archetypal hero. Foils, shades, cinematic entangling conjured by circumstance and similarity and author fiat.

“Neither of us were ever as good as we wanted to be.”

“Perhaps it was doomed from the start. Played like a damn fiddle by the worst people you know.”

“Fuck that.”

“Don’t you want to be better? To be happy?”

The crescendo is rising, orchestrated by a far-off conductor, directing one final, grand swell of belief to give these two young gods the push of change they need. A symphony for the reborn played in the ashes of a dying planet, offering hope to any who may hear it. The world is falling into the abyss of uncertainty and yet there is hope in an uncertain future.

The two gods, struggling with the threat of ascension, look someone in the eyes for the first time, and understand them. Jake and Terezi are both cryptic, too willing to hide behind a façade and think the best of them. Dave and John look at you and see someone evil, even if they try not to. I look at myself and hate what I see.

But I look at the young god in front of me and see someone who understands.

Dirk settles, leans back against one of the workbenches while I sit on the couch.

“Seriously, how did you know?”

“I’ve always had a sort of… sense? For the narrative spotlight. It’s part of why I was so interested in John, he never had to fight for it. And when I arrived here, I got like a system shock flash view of a future where you were strangely in control. Faster than the rest of us at realizing the nature of our selves and our reality. So firmly in control of the spotlight that to shine its focus on anyone else was to control them. I know its starting to take hold, the other versions of yourself, the infinite knowledge of those who lived and those who died and those who did awful things to survive.”

“It feels like I’m dying and being reborn all over again, in slow motion.”

“I know.”

To love is to be mortal.

“How are you holding up?”

“A little better. I’m used to shouldering the burden of having committed unspeakable evil.”

“The more I see of myself – my alternate selves – I think I get to that point too.”

“I could take it away. If you wanted.”

“Is that why you came?”

“At first, I wasn’t going to ask. But the closer I got, the more I felt the Vriskas that changed, that were different. The Vriska in me that maybe never wanted to hurt anyone in the first place. Even when that was all she knew.”

“I’m scared, Vriska. I’m scared of what I could become.”

“I am too.”

“Why would you willingly take command of that?”

“Some sort of suicidal hero complex, I guess.”

“You and me both.”

To understand is divine.

“Where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think we can go it alone.”

To be open, to be willing to change, is perhaps even something more.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weird one, even for me. I think it has something important to say. 
> 
> I wouldn't say that either Vriska or Dirk are talking in character, although I think the ideas expressed are well within who they could be and what they would do. 
> 
> An oncoming ascension does strange things to the mind.
> 
> To what end is an author controlled by their muse, and to what audience is a story written?


End file.
